


A Dim Capacity For Wings

by Aloysia_Virgata



Category: The X-Files
Genre: I Want To Believe, IWTB, William - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 10:10:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 17,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3130706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloysia_Virgata/pseuds/Aloysia_Virgata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Scully on the run, pre-IWTB.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> When the previews (and early spoilers) for IWTB first came out, I wrote a fic based on a conversation Scarlet Baldy and I had about how I things might have gone between The Truth and IWTB. In that story, I had them married because rumors were flying around about a band on Mulder's right ring finger. I thought it best to cover all my bases just in case. Really though, I never saw them as the marrying type and I decided to write a prequel to explore a situation in which I could see them getting married. So...I basically fanwanked my own fic. 
> 
> Reading the other story first will help this one make more sense in places, but it's not vital.
> 
> Many, many thanks to scarletbaldy for patiently editing numerous drafts with such care, and to amalnahurriyeh for squeezing in a look-see of the final draft during a very busy time for her. The title is from Emily Dickinson's poem that begins My Cocoon tightens-Colors tease-.

Lauren Atwater sits on the edge of the front stoop, drinking coffee out of a worn plastic travel mug she bought a year ago from a Dunkin' Donuts in Abilene. The coffee is from Revel's Feed Store and General Dry Goods up in town, and it's good as any Organic Fair Trade Limited Edition brew from Whole Foods. Mud streaks her cheeks, and her long, sweat-stiff hair's got hay tangled through it because she woke up at four-thirty to start mucking stalls for her landlord. A woman who, despite her Wicked Witch of the West features, turned out to be the kindhearted, grandmotherly sort. Vera had sweetened Lauren's under the table pay with rent-free lodging in a tiny four-room cottage on her property. But she is exacting about her horses and Lauren's arms hurt from all the shoveling and hauling. Her triceps are looking damn good after a month of this though. She smiles at the thought and takes another sip of coffee.  
  
When she'd gotten home a little while ago, Lauren had taken her clothes off in the postage stamp sized laundry/storage room, wadding the dirty t-shirt and shorts into the washing machine along with her socks, bra and underwear. Now she's wearing a pink bathrobe that clashes violently with her hair. It's a Pepto-Bismol colored chenille affair, soft as a new chick, with wide, deep pockets and a face-cradling lapel. The bathrobe's become a sort of joke now. She bought it for a dollar fifty at a revival tent flea market because, at the time, she didn't have a bathrobe or the money to be picky about what a new one might look like. Now it's traveled so far with her she can't bear to think of replacing it, though she pretends she only holds onto it because money's still scarce.  
  
She shields her eyes as a shadow ambles up the walk, ground up oyster shells crunching under a pair of work boots.  
  
"Goodness. You look a fright," he says.  
  
"I expect I do," she agrees. "But really, I didn't know there was a dress code for the porch. It's before five, so cocktail attire seemed a bit much."  
  
"It's five o'clock somewhere," he admonishes, then glances at her mug. "I don't suppose there's any more coffee, is there? Harvey ran out at the house and tried to buy me off with a second cinnamon bun, but I'll be damned if I can be had that cheap." He wipes sweat from his forehead and scowls.  
  
She smiles in return. "Did you happen to bring me this pastry which you so nobly disdained?"  
  
"I ate it," he admits. "But I made it clear that it was an unacceptable offering. I spent the whole morning out in that west pasture sawing up every single one of those trees by myself because that asshole nephew of his got too drunk to wake up on time." He sits on the step next to her, his left knee scabbed over after a run-in with the tractor on Wednesday.  
  
She'd been afraid he'd need stitches and that she'd attract attention by stitching him up, but once the blood had been mopped away, the cut wasn't as bad as she'd feared. "There's always more coffee," she tells him. "But you'd better make another pot. I have to be out to the shelter by two and I need to shower without falling asleep and drowning myself."  
  
He sniffs her. "I'd certainly hate to interfere with your hygiene. You smell like a right-wing militia bomb factory, Scully," he tells her, with the air of a sommelier ferreting out the blackcurrant notes of a good Bordeaux.  
  
She pinches his arm. "Don't call me that," she admonishes. "You know better."  
  
He rolls his eyes and scratches a mosquito bite on his neck. "Nobody's around."  
  
"Still, it's a bad habit."  
  
"Bad habits are the only kind I ever managed to cultivate," he informs her. "I see you've pulled out the Muppet skin again despite the oppressive heat. Wouldn't you rather go naked than wear fur?"  
  
Scully hunkers down into the silky, synthetic fibers of her robe. "Shut up," she says amiably. "And, by the way, you don't smell like a rose yourself."  
  
"It's becoming on me. It's the manly smell of a man who has engaged in a hard morning of lone, manly labor." He pounds his chest and steals her coffee cup.  
  
"You'll go blind if you spend all your mornings engaged in hard, lone, manly labor."  
  
"Keep me company more often, then. That west pasture's awfully isolated…"  
  
She grins at him and takes her mug back. She turns it slowly in her hands, her thumbnail flicking at the places where the letters are worn away. "I drove by the house again," she says, watching him sidelong. "I pulled around back and walked over to that stream by the woods. There were some huge crayfish in it. They need their ranks thinned. I could plant some grapes out by the woodshed." She knows he doesn't want the house. He doesn't want to settle here or, it would seem, anywhere. But Christ, she's tired of running, and heartsick for someplace to call home. This is the longest they've stayed anywhere, and she's getting attached. They've got five sets of identification that will hold up to the scrutiny of a home loan, Lauren Atwater and Andrew Zeller among them.  
  
He smiles at her, his eyes crinkled up at the corners. She's been looking at his eyes for over a decade and still can't make out what color they are.  
  
"Grapes sound good," he tells her. "What about chickens? There's something so pastoral about a rooster. I may take to wearing overalls if we ever acquire one."  
  
"God forbid. There's a fox-in-the-henhouse joke in there somewhere, but I can't find it," she muses.  
  
"Don't. Besides, my name's Andrew now, remember?"  
  
"You could be an Andrew," she remarks.  
  
"I've come a long was since Rob Petrielikethedish, yes? But you don't look like a Lauren. I think you should be Abigail next time. I always liked the name Abigail."  
  
She sighs a little. "It means 'my father is joy.' But I'd rather stay here and just be Lauren and Andrew until whatever's coming comes." It's as close as she'll get to any mention of 2012. 2012 makes her think of William, and thinking of William makes her hands ache with barely contained anxiety.  
  
"What else do you want at the house, Lauren?"  
  
She can tell he knows what she's thinking and is trying to redirect her thoughts. But even knowing that doesn't prevent her from feeling soothed. She remembers a question he'd asked her years ago. _Can you name me one drug that loses its effect once the user realizes it's in his system_? She still couldn't. The tension in her hands is receding.  
  
She settles back against the step, resting her elbows on the gapped wooden treads. "I want to have a big garden. I'd like to grow some heirloom tomatoes. Those bright-colored ones that are all misshapen and striped, do you know the ones? Maybe an orchard. Peaches, plums…" she trails off and shakes her head.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
She shrugs. "All the education I have, and I couldn't tell you the first thing about planting an orchard. It's just funny I guess. How life turns out." She doesn't really think it's funny at all, but she'd gotten into the car with him time after time and this was the road they'd ended up taking. She's okay with it now. Mostly. Scully misses her baby and her mother and her various skin creams, but Lauren can rebuild a transmission and field dress a deer. She can certainly grow a damn orchard if he'd just stay somewhere long enough to let her plant one.  
  
"You'll figure it out. You always do." He doesn't specify whether he means the orchard in particular or life in general.  
  
Pleased in either case, she smiles at him. However unwillingly, he's indulged her house fantasy for a time, and she's grateful. "This robe looks ridiculous with my hair," she observes, apropos of nothing. "I was thinking I might get rid of it. Buy something less obnoxious."  
  
"I'm all for it. I heard on the radio that they're having a twofer down at Mr. Ray's Hair Weave. You go pick out something blonde and sexy, and I'll see if they can help a brother out with some dreds."  
  
Scully smiles a little. "I was thinking just a regular old white robe, as in days of yore."  
  
He scoots closer and strokes her sleeve. "Don't. I've found I like you in pink fluff. There's something whimsical and unexpected about it."  
  
"Well, you know me. I'm the Unexpected Whimsy poster girl."  
  
"Oh, there's no stopping you. I remember the time you ordered your grilled chicken salad with lemon-poppy dressing instead of fat-free ranch and I said to myself, 'Fox Mulder, you'd better watch that one because there is no telling what outlandish tricks she'll think up.'"  
  
"Sometimes I'd shock myself and go for the zesty Italian." She checks her watch. "I'd better get cleaned up. Some guy trapped 14 feral kittens out by his chicken house and, more than likely, I'll be spending my afternoon picking ticks off of them. What are you up to for the rest of the day?"  
  
"Taking some hay over to Lorelei's and maybe playing baseball with Dwight and his buddies depending on how long it all takes. I'll probably be home before you though. I'll get dinner going."  
  
She stands, then walks up the creaky steps to the front door. "I like it here," she says. "I'm tired all the time, but it's a good kind of tired." She rubs the tip of her sunburned nose. "I really want you to think about staying."  
  
"I like your freckles," he says.  
  
The screen door snaps shut when she goes into the house.


	2. Chapter 2

"Well shit, son," Harvey says. "I'm sorry he didn't show up. I'd-a gone out there with you myself if I'd known." He's tall and lanky, half-sitting on a bar stool, with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up his forearms. His skin is almost the color of the good leather saddles in the barn.  
  
"I know you would have," Mulder replies, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. "But it wasn't any trouble."  
  
Harvey makes a harrumphing sound, but says nothing further on the matter. "You taking that truck over to Lorelei's here shortly?" He squints out the window towards the front barn, his clear gray eyes as sharp as they were in his sniper days.  
  
"Yes sir. That's the plan."  
  
"I'll ride along too. I haven't seen the baby since Saturday. How's your knee?"  
  
"Knee's fine." This isn't strictly true, but it's mostly fine. Good enough for government work, as they say. Besides, Harvey had the first two fingers of his right hand lopped off with a bolt cutter while he was a POW in Korea. Mulder's hardly going to whine about his boo-boo in the presence of such an injury.  
  
"And how's that cute little girlfriend of yours? I always like a girl with red hair."  
  
Mulder smiles at the idea of Scully being called a cute little anything. "She's fine too, thanks."  
  
"You both getting along with everbody all right?"  
  
"Yes sir." They generally work and go home and mind their own business, which is as well as they've ever gotten along with anybody. Although, for Scully's sake, he is making moves towards being a more social animal. He plays baseball once a week.  
  
"Y'all are real quiet. People are still adjusting to that, I expect. People in small towns always talk a lot, you know, even if they cain't be bothered to say much."  
  
Mulder takes a long drink of orange juice, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I hope no one's offended. I guess we just don't have much interesting to say and don't want to bother anyone." He laughs in a self-deprecating way, and imagines discussing the finer points of cryptozoology over at Arlene's Bar, where Arlene plays both kinds of music: Country and Western.  
  
Harvey laughs too and claps him on the shoulder. "Well, you just get along however you need. I talked to Miss Rebecca over to the shelter. Said everbody likes Lauren real well and she's good with the animals."  
  
"I'll be sure to tell her that, Harvey. Thank you."  
  
Harvey nods, looking pleased at having passed on good news. "Sure thing. Listen, Vera told me Lauren likes that nice little blue house out on Black Dog Lane. I cain't make any promises, but I do know that Everly Tate is mighty keen to sell it. I expect he'll take ninety for it."  
  
Mulder swallows another mouthful of juice. "Ninety? He's asking one-thirty, isn't he?" They can afford a down payment on ninety thousand now, but he doesn't want the house. He doesn't want any house. He gets anxious when they stay still too long, even though he knows it's killing Scully.   
  
"Mmm. As I said, no promises. But if I were a betting man - which, as it happens, I am, - I'd lay money on the fact that you could have it for ninety without a lick of trouble. Naturally, this information did not come to you from me."  
  
"I'll take the secret to my grave," Mulder vows. Which, in his case, provides less than the usual degree of assurance, but Harvey doesn't know that and Mulder wouldn't say a word to Everly anyhow.  
  
Harvey glances at the clock on the microwave, then pulls a John Deere hat over his thick silver hair. "Well, let's get along then. Vera's got a bunch of hens coming over to cluck later. Having one of them vendor parties she likes so well, and I need to get back in time so as she can make a production of shooing me out."  
  
Mulder laughs. He likes Harvey and Vera and their sprawling, comfortable house. He likes the easy way they talk, their vast, rolling acreage dotted with obscenely expensive horses, and their utter lack of pretension. His mother would have disdained them. Completely NOCD. Not our class, dear.  
  
They walk out through the sunroom and down to where the loaded hay truck's parked. Harvey and Vera's daughter Lorelei keeps two cows, several goats, and a half-dozen horses and they bestow truckloads of their sweet-smelling hay upon her at regular intervals.  
  
"Hard to believe I got six grandkids now," Harvey says as they climb in. "Don't know how the kids managed to grow up when I never got any older. Y'all ever think about having some babies?"  
  
Mulder smiles faintly over the painful acid surge in his stomach. "You never know," he says, buckling his seatbelt.  
  
"You never do."  
  
Silence for a time, the back country road jostling them on the sun-warmed seat. Mulder remembers the father of the little girl who wasn't Samantha. Roche's victim. _I used to think that missing was worse than dead because you never knew what happened_. He suddenly aches to tell Harvey about William, to make his son real in this new life he's living, but he steps down hard on the feeling.  
  
"Y'all aren't from around here. I mean, not within a five hundred mile radius," Harvey states.  
  
Mulder doesn't deny it. "Sometimes you have to go a long way to leave a thing behind." It's the closest he can come to being honest.  
  
Harvey nods thoughtfully, then holds up his right hand. "Sometimes you do. But sometimes it follows you anyhow and you have to learn to live with it. You look tired, boy. I think you've gone far enough."  
  
Mulder looks out the window at the sunlight filtering through the cottonwood and pine. He can hear jays and mourning doves calling to each other, and the lowing of cows out in Jerry Tisdale's pasture. Long white chicken houses stretch across the horizon, and the big grain elevator out in Skipton rises above the landscape. Raspberry bushes jeweled with ripe red fruits cluster around the split rail fences beside the road. He knows that she'll leave him if he can't promise her more than this fly-by-night existence. The loneliness is diffusing through her like ink in water, and there's hardly a clear patch left. "I think you're right, Harvey," Mulder says, watching bees drone in the clover. "I think we've gone far enough."


	3. Chapter 3

The first time Scully disappeared was three months after they'd gone on the run. They were living in a motel about fifty miles outside of Moab, Utah. She wrote a note on a paper towel and left it wrapped around his toothbrush.  
 _  
Back in two days. No need for your panic face._  
  
The handwriting was undoubtedly hers, but it didn't stop him from panicking. Mulder punched the wall until a crack spiderwebbed up and plaster started raining down from the ceiling like ashes. He couldn't call the police, he had no neighbors or friends, and hated that a civilian life meant no badge and gun allowing him to make demands of the populace. He filled the sink with ice water and dunked his head into it, the shock leaving him gasping for breath. From that reboot, he calmed himself down, rationalizing that if someone had taken her, there would be (a) signs of a struggle and (b) a more ominous note. He forced himself not to do anything rash and, instead, went through her belongings. The red duffel bag, one pair of shorts, underwear, and a gray t-shirt were missing. The little wooden box full of heartache - the item she always packed first when they moved - was still in a dark corner of the closet. He made himself wait. He ate little and slept less.   
  
Forty-two hours later, he was outside changing a flat on their van when Scully came down the sidewalk, the setting sun at her back.   
  
She looked tired, her shoulders slumped forward, strands of hair wrapped across her face. She straightened when she saw him, her chin tipping up as she hitched the duffel bag up on her shoulder. "Hi," she said, something like defiance in her voice.  
  
He tightened the nuts on the tire, then wiped his hands on his grease-stained jeans. "If I'd known you were coming, I'd've baked you a cake," he replied, too pissed to let her see his relief.   
  
"I left a note."  
  
"It brought me a great deal of comfort, thanks. Your penmanship is so elegant." He stood up to lean against the passenger's side door.  
  
She glared at him, then walked around to the walkway through the main building of the motel. Behind it was the broad ocean of desert that brought in just enough tourists to sustain the rattletrap establishment where they lodged.  
  
Mulder watched her vanish around the corner, then followed behind. He'd known her to stay out there for hours, lost in thoughts he was too afraid to ask about.   
  
Scully was sitting with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them. Her small body cast a long shadow over the red sand and stone. She said nothing and did not stir when he took a seat beside her. She kept her empty gaze on the canyons to the south; a rust-colored hellscape, bloodied by the waning sun.  
  
He studied her for a moment. A summer of working outside in the blazing Southwest heat had turned her hair the same shade as the inside of a ripe peach. Her skin, while still smooth, was now golden and freckled instead of creamy. "Why'd you go?" he asked her cautiously.   
  
Fluid shrug of her shoulders. "I don't know. Maybe to see if I'm capable of walking away from you." She laughed darkly. "I'm still not, as it happens."  
  
He'd known this was coming. It had been looming for a season, but the stark bitterness of her words still punched him low in the gut. A beat, and then he spoke. "I know how -"  
  
She turned to stare at him with gas-flame eyes. "What, Mulder? What do you know? How hard this is for me? The hell you do."  
  
Count to three, crush the flash of temper between his molars. He tried again. "We both left -"  
  
"We?" Scully got to her knees, her face level with his, her voice tight with anger. "We? What did you leave? Your money? Your houses? A few graves? You left it all ages ago for-"  
  
She was pushing it. "You can't think I-"  
  
"For the truth, the fucking truth you couldn't even tell me when they were going to kill you for it! You left me for a desert full of mystical claptrap. For the rambling of a crazy old man. You left your son, you _asshole_!" She was shouting down at him by then, the bright rage in her exploding outwards like a supernova. "And I left everything because of it, god _damn_ you. My mother, my brothers, my _child_." Her shoulders trembled with her voice, but she held her head up and stared at him.   
  
And she'd pushed far enough. He believed for the briefest, most awful instant that he could hit her, but instead he spoke in a low and steady voice. “Don’t you dare put this all on me, Scully. You gave up our son, you gave him up and I never had a word to say on the matter. God forbid you should ask for help for once in your life; it might put a crimp in your fucking Joan of Arc routine."  
  
Tears breached the dam of anger, running down her cheeks to leave dark spots on her khaki shorts. "You have no idea what you're talking about," she choked out. "You don't know what it was like."  
  
Mulder watched her in silence. He hurt for her. Because of her. But he was also outraged that she should try and guilt him. He thought it beneath her. "Leave," he said flatly.  
  
She sat back on her heels at this. "What?"  
  
"Go back to DC. Trade them my last known address for immunity. Don't worry - I'll be long gone by then. Maybe you can go marry some regular Joe who will put a roof over your head until the fucking apocalypse comes in a decade or so." Mulder saw the dull shock in her eyes at this, saw that it stung her, and found - to his shame - that he liked it.  
  
"I don't…I wasn't…" She trailed off, the words falling limply from her cracked lips.  
  
"You do," he said. "And you were. Don't act like you don't imagine it all going differently for you. Imagining the life you should be having right now. And don't act like you didn't know what you were signing up for, Scully." He knew he was being unkind, that she hadn't really known. That he'd kept secrets from her. But for her to bring up William was low, considering what he'd come back to just a few months ago.  
  
There were shiny streaks on her face. "Ten years, Mulder, and I still don't know what the hell I signed up for. Why does it have to be so black and white with you? I had to get some space. And then I came back. You can't be the only thing I need all the time. We can't live like that." She sounded tired, resigned. The fury had been spent, and her eyes were the same faded blue as Mulder's jeans.  
  
"Go home," he said. He drank in the familiar angles of her face, studying each new freckle and line in case she called his bluff and packed her few things. Mulder had learned to pre-package his memories.  
  
Scully drew her knees up to her chin, watching the horizon swallow up the sun like the great, glowing egg of a phoenix. She was crimson and gold as the landscape, a thing of contained fire. They stared out together into the desert, at the creosote and sandstone warped by wind and heat into shapes both strange and beautiful. He waited until her breathing slowed, until there seemed no further risk of immolation for either one of them. At length he slid closer and chanced resting his hand on her thigh.   
  
She remained folded in on herself, slim and still beneath the burning sky. "Do you know the story of Ruth?" she asked.  
  
"'Whither thou goest,' right? That one?"   
  
"Yeah," she said. "That's the one."  
  
"How'd things go for Ruth?"  
  
"She lived happily ever after," Scully told him.  
  
She relaxed her stiff posture when he put his arm around her, holding her like a basket of smoke.


	4. Chapter 4

He'd called around six to say that the baseball game had gone into extra innings and he'd be much later than expected, so she fixed herself two poached eggs with toast and fruit salad. She ate them on the old cedar swing behind the house, then left her dishes there and went for a quiet walk as the purple twilight whispered down.  
  
Leonard's Pond lies silver and still as condensed moonlight, and Scully sits before it in a little clearing near the pine trees. The early September night is warm and sultry, and her body aches from too much work. She's off tomorrow, and is making plans about sleeping in until seven-thirty. Behind her comes a low crunching sound that startles the crickets into silence. Even after fifteen months, her hand still goes to her hip for the gun she left behind in her other life.  
  
Mulder emerges from the pine trees, ducking around the low boughs, but still bumping his forehead. He holds his thumb and forefinger at right angles, points them at her, and says, "Bang."  
  
Scully rolls her eyes, but smiles. "Watch where you point that thing."  
  
He waggles his eyebrows, which makes her toss her head in scorn. "Did you win?" she asks.  
  
He settles down beside her in a bed of dried pine needles and kisses the little dip at the top of her cheekbone. "It was a moral victory."  
  
"Ah."  
  
"I told Lorelei about the kittens you mentioned. She's interested in taking two or three when they're well enough."  
  
Scully turns to smile at him in the dusky light. "I'll call Rebecca tomorrow."   
  
He scratches his neck and, to Scully's dismay, looks anxious. In years previous, anxious looks meant he was about to pontificate on werewolves or merpeople, and she could exercise her brain with exasperated contradictions. But now they generally signify far more unpleasant topics of conversation. He wants to move again, she thinks, and feels preemptively defensive.  
  
"I thought maybe we could take one too," he says.  
  
"Mulder…?"   
  
"Andrew. I think you'd better get in the habit of calling me Andrew all the time, Lauren, because I plan to stick with it indefinitely."  
  
Before she can manage a reply, Mulder's talking again, the words coming fast and jittery.  
  
"I talked to Harvey today, which led me to call Everly Tate. We can afford the house if you still want it. So you know, I thought a cat would be good since we're going to stay here. Just keep it away from my rooster, all right?"  
  
She actually gapes at this, staring at him wide-eyed for a moment. "I have no idea what to say," she says, having recovered her powers of speech. It's hardly a brilliant reply, but it's honest, and therefore a reasonable starting point.   
  
Mulder rubs his hands over his face before dropping them to his lap. "You know Lorelei's baby is a month younger than William," he tells her softly.  
  
Scully closes her eyes. "Don't," she says, hearing the note of panic in her own voice. "Please don't." Her light dinner sits like lead in her stomach, and her skin is beginning to crawl. He's lured her into this conversation under false pretenses. Kittens indeed.  
  
"She's talking up a storm. Running all over the place. William was so little when I saw him, but I guess he's doing all that now."  
  
" _Please_. I'm not… We can talk about this another time." Her throat is so constricted that it hurts to speak and she wants Mulder to shut the fuck up and go away.  
  
He shakes his head. "No," he says. "This is all the time we'll ever have."  
  
She can barely see him in the drawn curtain of night, but stares at his face anyway. "What, then?" she whispers.   
  
There's no answer for a moment. When he finally replies, the words are choppy and ragged. "When I was in the…when Skinner told me that, um…about William. Jesus, Scully. I hated you. For weeks it, uh, it was hard to look at you sometimes." He laughs a little after this confession - a nervous, half-relieved sound. "But I want to tell you that I'm just…I'm so sorry you had to do it. I don't really think I ever told you that."   
  
She notices he doesn't say he understands or that he forgives her. Scully's certain she's too heartbroken to cry, but doesn't trust herself to say anything just the same.   
  
She risks a few words. "I'm sorry too. And I hated you for leaving."  
  
Mulder reaches up to take her hand, squeezing it. "I want…" He clears his throat. "I want to start with as clean a slate as possible, all right?"  
  
"What does that mean?"  
  
"Well, the house. Let's buy the house and have our own place. We'll subscribe to seed catalogues so you can grow improbable tomatoes. And you pick out whichever kitten looks the most pathetic and bring it home. And I was, um, I was thinking…" He rests her hand on his leg and draws little pictures on the back of it with his finger. "I was thinking you might want to get married, Lauren."  
  
She sighs deeply, breathing in air sweet with timothy and honeysuckle. Some part of her had known this was coming, and she wants nothing more than to say yes for both their sakes. "I can't," she tells him, grateful for the dark.  
  
He coughs. "Oh. Okay. I just, well, because you're _Catholic_ , so I thought, you know, making you an honest woman or whatever…"  
  
His embarrassed rambling pinches at her heart and she remembers again why she followed him down all the dark alleys that led them here. "You can't make me honest with a lie."  
  
"A lie?" The hurt seems to have been replaced by confusion.  
  
"We're not Lauren and Andrew, Mulder. The house, that's one thing. But marriage is a promise to God and if I can't do it as myself, it's a lie." She hadn't known she felt so strongly about it until the words had been spoken, but she's sure of it now. She's as sure of it as she was of walking away from Daniel, of leaving behind medicine, of kissing William goodbye.  
  
"I understand," he murmurs.  
  
She wonders if he does, if his faith is analogous enough to hers to grant him that understanding. "Ask me again when this all over."  
  
"Aren't you the little optimist?"  
  
She strains for sounds of bitterness in his words, but there are none. Just something sad and fond and aching. "I refuse to believe we'll spend the rest of our lives in hiding," she asserts. "It might take years, but one day it'll be finished."  
  
"My God. You could be _old_ by then. Who says I'll still want you?"  
  
Relief washes through her. He's making jokes, which means things are okay. She quietly pushes thoughts of William back into the forgetting place. "I didn't promise I'd say yes," she points out. "You may get a reprieve."  
  
"A man doesn't like being jilted," he says haughtily. "I'm going to have to think very seriously about all of this now. You practically threw my engagement kitten back in my face."  
  
"A gentleman should never ask his intended to provide her own engagement kitten."  
  
"I'm a poor man, and you have no dowry."  
  
Scully snorts. "You've got about five-point-two million dollars in assets, last time I checked. Your family certainly had a penchant for real estate."  
  
"Mulder's family left him plenty, but Andrew is not going to be needing a wealth management advisor any time soon."  
  
She slides over to rest her head against his shoulder. "I want the house," she says. "Will you live in sin there with me until such time as we can return to publicly addressing one another by our rightful surnames?"  
  
"Well, since you asked so nicely…"  
  
"We'll need furniture. There's an Ikea about 2 hours away. Will you buy FLERVIKS and SNÄÄRFENS with me, Andrew?"  
  
He kisses her hair and skips a pebble across the pond. "Lauren, you're a hopeless romantic."  
  
She tucks her head beneath his chin. "No," she says. "I'm not hopeless."


	5. Chapter 5

"I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing Berger cookies, pizza from Paradiso's, licensure to practice medicine in the state of Virginia, season's tickets to the Knicks' games, a Farouk CHI flat iron, a Maxa Beam flashlight, a scanning electron microscope, and some cannoli from that mean old guy on Pennsylvania Avenue."  
  
Scully, who is folding towels on the kitchen table, pauses to scratch a mosquito bite on her leg. "He went out of business right after you left," she says. "Moved back to Sicily. You have to pick something else."  
  
"What? No I don't." Mulder, washing dishes, looks put out. Whether it's by the loss of the distant cannoli or her decree is anyone's guess.  
  
"You do. It's in the rules. You have to pick something you can actually have."  
  
"You're cheating."  
  
"I never cheat," she says with a touch of asperity.   
  
"No, I suppose you don't. You just bend the rules beyond the point of recognition to ensure your triumph."  
  
Scully deals him a look full of withering irony.  
  
"Which I've always liked about you," he adds.  
  
"Are you forfeiting?" she queries, rising from the table to join him at the counter.  
  
"It's a moral victory."  
  
"Mmm," she says, putting away the clean silverware. "You have a lot of those, don't you?"  
  
"You wouldn't know anything about it. Cheater." He scrapes cheese off of a dinner plate and flicks the garbage disposal on for a moment.  
  
She likes this. She likes the playful sniping while washing dishes at her own sink in her own house. They've been living on Black Dog Lane for ten days now and the thrill is far from wearing off. Scully, without a landlord for the first time in her adult life, has happily stocked up on home repair books in anticipation of something breaking so that she can fix it.   
  
Her work, while not intellectually stimulating, is enjoyable. It keeps her fit and busy and, tentatively, she's begun making friends. Lorelei invited her to the weekly trivia night she and some girlfriends attend at the bar, and Scully - to her own great surprise - accepted. Mulder's already begun teasing her about it, asking if Arlene's pub quiz is likely to feature categories such as _Use of Computerized Tomography in Postmortem Exams_ or _Implications of Telomere Shortening._ The veterinarian at the shelter, impressed by her "natural ability," has been urging her to go to school and become a vet tech.   
  
"Let's take a vacation," she says suddenly. "Somewhere nice."  
  
"We're pretty much broke," he reminds her. "You went a little nuts with the FLERVIKS, although we do now have a handsome set of Allen wrenches."  
  
"Well, yes. But I like having long-term goals in mind."  
  
"Isn't 'not getting arrested by our former colleagues' a good long-term goal? Because it tops my list at present, I have to tell you."  
  
She waves her hand dismissively. "A few dollars into a savings account whenever we can spare it. Where do you want to go?"  
  
He dries the last glass and looks thoughtful. "I saw an article about silicon-based worms in a lake just outside a remote Mongolian village. We could go there and drink fermented mare's milk. Live in a yurt."  
  
Scully regards him with both contempt and suspicion, long years of red-eye flights and hospital stays having taught her not to dismiss any apparent lunacy outright. "Congratulations," she says. "You're fired from the planning committee."  
  
He sits down at the table and starts pairing up socks. "You don't think a yurt sounds fun?"   
  
"I don't believe you even think a yurt sounds fun. It's just a systems check, to see if you can still convince me to go somewhere insane. I was hoping we might…um. I wanted to go somewhere kind of more romantic." She says the last word shyly, even as she pictures them lounging in hammocks and drinking elaborate cocktails ornamented with fruit. She's never really been on a big vacation.  
  
Mulder's looking at her warmly, which makes her feel shyer. "How about Paris?" he asks. "Paris is romantic, right? I think you'd love it. I used to go with Phoe- ellow students when I was at Oxford," he finishes lamely.   
  
She laughs. "You think I'm jealous of your girlfriend from…what? Twenty years ago?" That sociopath who had you wrapped around her trigger finger, she doesn't say, certain that Mulder knows exactly what she thinks of his weakness for leggy, socially maladjusted brunettes.  
  
He cocks an eyebrow at her. "Oh, let's not be coy. You were a little weird when she was in."  
  
"She was a little weird." Scully clears her throat. "Oh Fox, darling, I hope you won't think me rude if I engage in a little deranged psychological warfare."  
  
Mulder laughs. "Your RP is impressive as ever."  
  
"Thank you. I own the entire _Jeeves and Wooster_ DVD collection. Owned. Own?" The verbs tenses of her parallel lives have become slippery.  
  
"Own. I won't torture you with remembrances of past loves. So let's forget Paris. We'll pick somewhere neither of us has been before. Clean slate, right?"  
  
Scully looks out the window, where feathery moths swirl around the porch light like snow. "I guess that rules out Antarctica," she observes.  
  
"Alas, it does. And the Arctic Circle. Norway's off the list too."  
  
"Don't forget the Ivory Coast."   
  
"Several hundred dreary little towns throughout this great nation."  
  
Scully sighs. "How come no one ever gets eaten by sea monsters or beset by vampires in Hawaii?"  
  
"They do. It's an elaborate cover-up perpetrated by the State Board of Tourism. I'd take you there and prove it, but Hawaii's out too. My dad used to go there on a golf vacation in the summer, and he'd bring us along sometimes."   
  
"Jamaica?"  
  
"Roommate's stag weekend." Mulder sounds apologetic.  
  
"Aruba?"  
  
He perks up. "Never been."  
  
"Good. That'll be the plan then."  
  
Mulder rewards her with an off-key chorus of _Kokomo_ , and puts the last pair of socks in the basket. "I got you a housewarming present," he says. "I know it's a little belated and it's also kind of self-serving, but anyway. I hope you like it.  
  
Lingerie, she thinks in abject mortification. He's gone and purchased some kind of tacky lace confection and it's going to be awkward and horrifying. "You didn't have to get me anything," she says a little too fast. "I didn't buy you a present."   
  
"As I said, this one's self-serving. Come on outside and I'll show you."  
  
She cocks her head, curiosity stirring in her, and she sees Mulder smile to have the upper hand. There's no chance of him ever wearying of surprises. She gets up and follows him to the sliding glass doors that lead to the back deck.  
  
The silvered pine planks creak a little beneath her bare feet, and she slips on the green flip flops next to the steps. They both pause to spray themselves with Off!, then walk down to the overgrown flagstone path that winds back behind the woodshed. The air is tangy with the scent of windblown crabapples turning to cider in the grass.  
  
Mulder leads her down through the stand of cottonwood trees at the back end of Leonard's Pond which is fed, in part, by the stream that circles the edge of their property. The water is purple and orange with the reflected sunset, the surface alive with tiny splashes and eddies. "Happy housewarming," he says, pointing.  
  
She gives him a questioning look.   
  
He presses his finger to her chin, steering her head to the left where a bright red jon boat bobs in the rippling water. There are white letters on the side and an Evinrude outboard on the back  
  
"You got me a boat?" She squints at the letters, then grins broadly. " _Pequod_ ," she says.   
  
He shrugs, jamming his hands into his pockets, looking pleased and embarrassed. "I know it isn't exactly a whaleship, but there aren't many whales around here and besides, I didn't need Greenpeace gunning for me along with everybody else."  
  
Her face hurts from smiling. "You got me a boat," she repeats, walking along the water's edge to the little dock where the _Pequod_ is tied. It's stocked with a few rods and a sturdy long-handled net. She sees a tackle box under the center bench and thinks of Mulder as an Indian Guide in New England, tracking woodland creatures and fly-fishing for striped bass.  
  
"It's used," he says, with an air of self deprecation. "But I patched it up pretty good and repainted it, and the motor works great now. The guy I bought it from is bringing the boat trailer over tomorrow morning when he gets his new one, but I wanted you to see it in the water first anyway."  
  
Scully crouches down and runs her finger over the glossy paint, listening to the small waves lap at the sides. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, drawing in the smell of wet rope and wood, the music of living water.  
  
"I'm glad you like it," he says from behind her. "I thought we might take it for a spin on Saturday and catch something to go with that raspberry pie Vera promised."  
  
She gazes at the boat again, smiling. "I love it," she says softly, hearing the thickness in her voice. "Thank you." She gets to her feet, stepping close to him. Her fingers absently fiddle with his buttons as she stares up and lets him read her eyes. It doesn't make her uncomfortable anymore, acknowledging the breathless thing that crackles between them, but the words are still skittish when she tries to summon them.   
  
_Never show 'em your hand, Starbuck. And never show 'em how much you have to lose._  
  
Scully reaches down and twines her fingers through his, their once-smooth white collar hands now callused and scarred. "Come on," she says, pulling him back to the cottonwood grove. Clusters of aspens mingle throughout, their tremulous leaves fluttering in the light breeze. Green-gold light filters through the canopy, dappling them both with shadowed camouflage, and through the trees she sees a kestrel swoop to the pond, snapping up something bright and thrashing. She is overcome by the fitness of things, by the ruffled saprophytes on fallen trees and a fat raccoon snatching crayfish with its clever paws.  
  
She sits down against an evergreen trunk, the bark scraping her back, the lime green fuzz of moss soft against her calf. Mulder sits next to her, folding his long legs to the side. The sun catches the silver threads in his hair, highlighting his skin like a rustic god from a Waterhouse painting.   
  
Scully leans over and kisses him, and his work roughened hands make her shiver when they ease under her shirt. He fumbles at her bra with boyish haste, his mouth warm at her neck while she tugs first at the fastenings of his shorts, then of her own. Her underwear are still hooked around her left knee when he pulls her onto his lap. Scully settles against his thighs, drawing him inside her as he braces his hands between the hard wings of her scapulae.   
  
She traces the outlines of his features with a nail, marveling at the fine lines of his mouth, the way his eyelids are creased with all the delicacy of a paper crane. There is nothing hurried, nothing urgent, both of them old enough to know that harder and faster often makes for better porn than sex. Her lips are parted slightly, drying with her quickening breath, and her tongue slips out to moisten them. Mulder meets it with his own, hand sliding up to cradle the back of her head as he tips her down against the cool, damp earth.  
  
Her hair is tangled in the undergrowth, infused with the spicy oils of crushed ferns and pennyroyal, and Mulder is above her with his eyes closed and the tendons of his neck in bas relief. The moment is vivid, lush with sensation and color and she knows in some deep down way that if she lives to be very old, she will recall it in minute detail. She focuses on the interweaving of their bodies, his arm crooked beneath her head, her knee drawn like a bow against his hip. They move with practiced certainty, drawing ragged sighs and whispered entreaties, muted counterpoints to the sharp violins of the crickets.  
  
When he opens his eyes she can see herself reflected in them, a dryad in the wood. Her life, for all its many poverties, is rich in this instant. Love, deep and boundless, catches her up in its arms, coaxing from her throat all the things she thought she must never say.


	6. Chapter 6

Those first weeks after they started running are a dark smear in her memory, when the anger hummed like electricity and resentment coated the very air with a greasy film. The sex was frequent and often loud because they'd earned it, goddammit, even if it was had partially to punish each other and partially to punish themselves. Sometimes the rickety bed would squeak as he moved behind her, her eyes fixed on the cheap paneling as her hands gripped the particle wood headboard. She liked him looking at her tattoo, reminding him she'd belonged to other people before she'd run with him into the wasteland. Other times she clutched his weight against her, bruising her hips with his, biting her lip until her mouth was bright with the cold metal taste of blood.   
  
She was never on top, hating to be conscious of him looking at her - the faint stretch marks above her pelvic bone, the waxy star of scar tissue that shone on her belly. The way he made her pupils dilate and her white skin bloom to rose. Every night with him was a one night stand, unacknowledged by daylight as she draped herself with a sheet to walk from the bed to the rattling shower. She felt his eyes on her, knowing that he was taking stock of her idiosyncrasies, profiling her intimacy issues and her tendency to compartmentalize.  
  
She'd curse him quietly as she scrubbed him from her skin.  
  
It was a scorching July morning - five weeks after her life ended - and Mulder was sitting on the bed eating Raisin Bran from a scuffed plastic mixing bowl. She came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and curls of steam, smelling of Ivory soap and Lubriderm.  
  
"I love you," he said, making her freeze.  
  
She looked at him in silence for far longer than courtesy permitted.  
  
"I just thought you should know that," he went on. "I thought you should know that it's why I left you and why I came back and why I can stand living like this."   
  
He didn't elaborate on "this," but she could fill in the blanks. _Without my son. With a bounty on my head. With the knowledge that Doomsday clock is ticking down. With a woman who will only let me touch her when she can't look at me._ Pigeons squabbled at the window, the air conditioner clattered and whined, but all she could hear was the deafening silence in the room.  
  
"Okay," she said, not wanting to bear the responsibility of his pronouncement. Didn't he understand that it panicked her to be needed, to be expected to need in return? That it's why she ministered to the dead? To confess her feelings for him aloud, to surrender another piece of herself when she was so close to broken was more than she knew how to give.  
  
She caught a slice of her reflection in the mirror, disliking what she saw. Whippet-thin, long wet hair dragging out her sharp chin and nose, her eyes too big and dark-circled. She looked like an old time consumptive heroine, one of those feverish ingénues who reclined delicately on brocade cushions, fading like flowers as they spat blood into point lace handkerchiefs.   
  
The mirror showed Mulder on the bed, unshaven and unhappy, hurt weighing down his eyes and lower lip. She imagined she could fall through the image like water, and that on the other side Looking-Glass Scully could be kind to him and to herself. I'm better than this, she thought angrily, though the anger was vague and undefined, wandering through her in search of a target. It stopped briefly at her father's grave and resented him for the lesson of her proud austerity.  
  
"Mulder," said the Captain's daughter as she settled on the bed. She touched his wrist with careful fingers, feeling his heart keep time with her own. "I'm here because I want to be with you. I know…" she cleared her throat, blinking rapidly. "I know I'm not very good at conveying that. But I'm here."  
  
He set the bowl of cereal on the night table, then turned to her again. Leaning forward, his forearms grazing her shoulders, he gathered her dripping hair at the base of her head, wringing it out so that a thin trickle of water ran down her back until the towel drank it up. His bare chest was warm against hers, his breath tickling the sweep of her neck. He twined her hair into a thick braid, then took her by the shoulders and held her at arm's length.  
  
"I couldn't see you before," he said, brushing a few loose strands from her face.  
  
"I'm hungry," she told him, feeling naked without her veil of hair. "I want to go get a burger."  
  
"We'll be okay, Scully," he assured her, making goosebumps rise where his breath touched her skin. "We're always okay, right?"  
  
Scully rested her hand on his knee. She felt herself filling up with something other than nothing.


	7. Chapter 7

Mulder's out in the barn, loading up the blue pickup with two-by-fours to patch up a section of fencing. They have a nice piney smell, and make satisfying clunking sounds as he stacks them. He hears light footsteps from behind the truck and turns as Vera emerges around the corner, her black riding boots caked with mud.  
  
"Morning, Andrew," she says in her melting drawl. Vera is not blessed with beauty in any conventional sense of the term, but her voice regularly makes people weak in the knees. Mulder thinks it sounds like buttermilk biscuits and sun tea. She sings at Arlene's sometimes too, music rippling out of her like a wind-plucked harp.  
  
"Morning, Vera," Mulder replies, sliding another board into place. He brushes his hands off against his jeans, watching the dust filter lazily earthward in broad shafts of morning light.  
  
"I ran into Audrey from the post office over to the donut shop this morning and she said there's a certified letter there for you."   
  
He snaps to attention. "What?"  
  
"Yep. Audrey says it's from Washington, DC. Which she probably shouldn't have told me, but she did because her damn tongue's hung in the middle and flaps at both ends." Vera holds out a paper bag slightly stained with donut grease. "Here. I got you a cruller."   
  
"Thanks," he says, fighting surge of panic as he accepts the bag, wondering if Vera can hear his heart pounding like the hoofbeats of her Thoroughbreds. Mulder feels like his throat is closing up, like the air is thickening and condensing into something toxic and unbreathable.   
  
"Um." He looks up, forcing a smile onto his face. "Don't mention the letter to Lauren, would you? I…this is about a surprise for her." Surprise, Scully! We're fucked.  
  
Vera smiles at him, twisting her long salt and pepper hair into a knot at the nape of her suntanned neck. "I won't breathe a word. Oh, hey. Y'all should send out some moving announcements," she suggests. "I've been wanting to throw you a housewarming party."  
  
"Oh, well, you don't have to do that," he says, hoping his distracted tone will be mistaken for awkward gratitude   
  
"Yeah, yeah. Andrew, go get the letter now. The fence can wait. Lauren moved Black Cadillac and Santeria to the front paddock last night, so there's no hurry. Surprises are more important." She jerks her head at the truck and winks.  
  
Her voice is coming from a long way off, down a metal tube or a tunnel. He mumbles something vague and grateful before climbing into the pickup. She gives a friendly wave and heads into the tack room. Mulder watches her, watches her starting out a regular day without knowing she just handed pastry to a dead man walking.   
  
Mulder drives along the rutted dirt track that leads out to the road, his skin crawling and his heart feeling as though it might explode. The two by fours rattle behind him like the sound of another vehicle following close behind. Get a grip, he orders himself. You don't know it's anything bad. It could be totally innocuous. Something from the IRS or the Census Bureau.  
  
The miles disappear under a steady hum of panic and, suddenly, he finds himself parking at the red brick post office. He gets out of the cab, swallowing hard as he opens the heavy door.  
  
"Well, well. Look what the cat drug in," exclaims Audrey, patting a hand over her sleek black ringlets. "Morning, handsome. I reckon you're here about that letter." She drapes herself over the Formica counter, resting her chin on a slim brown hand. Audrey used to be a local beauty queen, and likes to cast soulful glances at Mulder from her stunning brown eyes. Scully finds Audrey amusing.  
  
"Can you give it to me please?   
  
"I was hoping you'd ask me that eventually." She winks at him, tongue poking through her teeth a little.  
  
His body is tingling with impatience, and state-mandated death is the only thing stopping him from leaping over the counter and sorting through the mail himself. He grits his teeth. "Audrey. I am in a hurry. And don't say anything to Lauren about this if you see her." _And if you do I will get your ass fired_ hangs unspokenly in the air between them.  
  
"Asking me to keep secrets from your girlfriend? You ought to be ashamed, you bad thing."  
  
"I believe there are at least four laws in place governing the destruction, obstruction and delay of mail," he informs her.  
  
Audrey stands huffily, turning to retrieve a manila envelope from a shelf, then slaps it down in front of him. She holds out a pen, letting their fingers touch when he takes it. "Sign, please," she murmurs, pointing at a blank line on the green return receipt. Mulder reminds himself to sign Andrew Zeller, and takes the envelope without another word to Audrey.  
  
He walks back to the pickup, his thumb worrying the edge of the Certified Mail sticker. The handwriting on the envelope is smooth and fluid - no crappy Bic pens here - and the imprint suggests it was written on a blotter. There's something hard and flat off to one side. Dread and curiosity mingle as he tosses it on the passenger's seat, where it sits like a pin-pulled grenade.  
  
Mulder drives back to the horse farm, turns off the central track into a small clearing where a short but steep hill leads down to the compost heap. He shuts off the engine and picks up the envelope again. He stares at it, wondering if he should rig up some kind of hazmat suit, and then decides that if anyone were really trying to kill him, they wouldn't bother with anything as unreliable as sending biotoxins through the post office.  
  
Darkly comforted by this assessment, he tears the envelope open, tipping out two passports, two driver's licenses, and two American Express cards onto the seat. A quick examination reveals that these items bear names Fox W. Mulder and Dana K. Scully. Hands shaking, he withdraws a sheet of paper, folded into thirds. He can see the FBI seal through the cream-colored stationery.  
  
He unfolds the letter and reads.  
  
Mr. Mulder,   
  
It is my privilege to inform you that all charges against you have been dropped. Recently declassified CIA documents have come to light linking you with a deep-cover operation to detect and neutralize enemy operatives infiltrating the highest levels of our government. Knowle Rohrer, as you are obviously aware, was named as one such operative. All parties involved regret that the highly classified nature of these documents prevented you from speaking of them at your trial, but respect your integrity even at the risk of your own life. You and Dr. Scully - who will have all the credentials of her profession restored - may, if you wish, be fully reinstated as Special Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All of your seized financial assets are now available to you.  
  
Prior to and during your absence, an international collective of experts has been working on perfecting the vaccine you and Dr. Scully encountered five years ago to make it viable for widespread distribution. Clinical trials are extremely promising, and your continued involvement in such intelligence would be welcome and appreciated if you wish to participate. Enclosed are valid forms of identification, as well as credit cards in your names, which you may activate when you see fit. Funds for lost wages, estimated travel and living expenses, as well as compensatory restitution will be made available to you upon your return to Washington, where the Director and myself both wish to meet with you and Dr. Scully.  
  
If I do not hear from you, there will be no further contact made.  
  
Regards,  
  
Alvin Kersh   
Deputy Director  
Federal Bureau of Investigation  
  
Mulder gapes, scanning the letter twice more in a daze. The FBI letterhead is the same stuff he and Scully had reams of, stored in a plastic bin in their office. He touches a finger to the imprint of Kersh's familiar signature. It's real. It's all real. They can stop hauling hay and manure. He can take Scully to Aruba, where they will spend a month drunk and ordering room service. She can see her nieces and nephews - if her family will speak to her.  
  
If they follow the rules.  
  
The subtext is clear - stick to the party line, you can come home a hero, and heck, we'll even let you help save the world. He suddenly feels cheap and used and so very, very fucking angry that they threw him out with the trash and then had the balls to send him this…this… _thing_ in the mail.   
  
He has an unexpected swell of loneliness at the thought of leaving Black Dog Lane. They have a life here now. He and Scully have played pool with Lorelei and her husband Dwight a couple of times, and he's become a regular feature at the baseball games. People sent them casseroles and pies when they moved into their little blue house with clematis climbing up the siding. Scully is the uncontested champion of Arlene's weekly trivia contest. What in the hell is waiting for them back in DC? Margaret Scully moved to San Diego after learning what had become of William. Life here is real - settled - but he has a powerful longing to go back to the familiar as well.   
  
He went along with Scully's dreamworld of absolution, though he never thought they'd actually be exonerated. But he realizes now that he had formulated a hazy fantasy in his own mind. There would be a helicopter, formal apologies, something in the papers about FBI AGENT FALSELY ACCUSED! But this? A bribe and a cock and bull story about the CIA thanking him for electrocuting an alien clone? Mulder and Scully, Andrew and Lauren…he's strung between two truths like a spider web, and all he can catch are lies.  
  
To live the lie, you have to believe it.  
  
Flashes come, some real memories and some only things imagined, all blurring together at the edges. Scully chip-implanted, cancer-snared, and gut-shot. Scully with her lip split and her eye blacked, Pfaster smashing her porcelain face against the glass. Emily dying by inches behind the window. Dead sisters, dead fathers, curls of cigarette smoke, the gray fingers of cadavers, and Scully with a scalpel and a gun. Her stricken face, her tired eyes and all of it replayed in a hundred, a thousand hotel rooms.   
  
He is afraid to risk going back to it even tangentially because, truth be told, he doesn't trust himself to stay away. He misses his badge, he misses his gun, he misses being backed - however grudgingly - by the might and main of the federal government. They owe him now. Owe him big time, and he is sorely tempted to cash in on that and ask some very serious questions. The vaccine tantalizes him. But he cannot let it touch her again, that broken life that took and took and took and left them both with nothing.  
  
Mulder crumples up the letter, stretches his arm back with the lazy grace of an athlete, and is about to toss the wad of paper through the open passenger's window and down into the compost heap when he sees the sun reflecting off of Scully's shiny new AmEx.   
  
He drops his hand to his lap and smoothes the paper over his thigh.   
  
She can be a doctor again. An FBI agent, if she wants. They'd probably make her Surgeon General if she asked, just to keep her mouth shut. He knows at this point she'd swear on the proverbial stack of Bibles that Jesus himself descended from Heaven and commanded the CIA to have Mulder dispose of Knowle Rohrer, Jimmy Hoffa, and the Tylenol Killer if it meant she could go home. She still does not always see things as he does.  
  
He remembers the small bundle of his son, imagines Scully handing him over to strangers because she didn't know what else to do. The old life touches them every day, no matter where they go. He shoves the letter, the identification, and the credit cards into his pocket.  
  
Mulder rests his head against the steering wheel and, for the first time in years, he cries.


	8. Chapter 8

There's a note stuck to the door when he gets home late that afternoon.   
  
Ishmael  
  
Hope you're in the mood for bass  
Come down to the water when you get this  
  
Starbuck  
  
He goes back down the steps, walking around the side of the house and down the path to the water. Out towards the middle of the pond, Scully's sprawled in her boat wearing a black bathing suit and a pair of green shorts, her fingers lazily skimming the water. Her face is half obscured by a pair of sunglasses, her legs draped carelessly across the center bench. A fishing pole lies half-propped at the end opposite her, balanced between two small coolers.   
  
Tell her. Tell her now. Get her out of that piece of shit boat and aboard a plane.  
  
But he can't. Not yet. I'll know when the time is right, Mulder thinks, rationalizing at warp speed. The moment will present itself.  
  
"Woman!" he yells. "What do you mean with this shirking? I've been working hard all day, dammit. Fetch me a martini."  
  
She raises her fingers from the water, flips him off, and then rests her hand across her stomach.   
  
The person in the boat, he knows, isn't Scully anymore. Or Dana. She's a new entity altogether, formed from this patchwork of tragedy, and he's not quite ready to risk giving up her freckled nose and easy laugh. Mulder tugs his shirt over his head, unbuttons his jeans, and drops them both to the grass before wading into the pond in his boxers. The water is warm, and he submerges himself entirely as he swims. He quickly covers the distance to the _Pequod_ and pulls himself partially up on the side, chin resting on his folded arms as he treads water.  
  
"Hello," he says. "I've come for the grog and wenches."  
  
She slides her sunglasses partway down her nose and offers him an amused look. "I'm busy here. The bar and brothel are closed for business until further notice."  
  
"I'm prepared to board your craft," he informs her, rocking the boat back and forth. "And I take no prisoners."  
  
She laughs. "Come on in then. I don't want you dumping out all my fish to prove a point."   
  
He hoists himself into the boat, squelching as he settles on the bench. "Hi honey, how was your day?" he asks in a falsetto as he takes one of her feet and massages the arch with his thumb.  
  
"Mmm," she says. "If I say it was terrible will you keep doing that out of sympathy?" She presses her toes into his palm and he shivers a little - the casual intimacy between them still throwing him for a loop now and again. How the hell did they get here? How did his hand go from barely brushing the waist of her sleek black jackets to being curved around the instep of her suntanned foot?  
  
"I'll do it just to be nice. So how was your day really?"  
  
"It was great, actually. I took that new mare out for a bit, then helped Lorelei with the chicks. Adopted out six cats and that donkey from the shelter. Came home, caught dinner. Got boarded by a pirate." She flexes her foot experimentally, then nudges the other one into his hands. "You?"  
  
Got exonerated by the federal government and cried like a girl. Also apparently decided to lie to you indefinitely.   
  
He shrugs. "Eh, you know. Fixed the fence. You bringing those horses back down later?"   
  
"No. Vera wants me to come to her book club."  
  
"You're funny."  
  
She pokes him in the stomach with her toe. "I'm serious. What, you don't think I can be in a book club? I used to have a life, back before you knew me. Girlfriends. We engaged in social behaviors. I thought I might try it again, see what it's like."  
  
Mulder laughs like he hadn't actually forgotten this. "So what has the Oprah commanded you all to discuss?"  
  
" _Hannibal_ ," she replies. "It's about a female FBI agent who gives up everything to go on the run with a former psychiatric specialist wanted for murder. Can you imagine?"  
  
He flicks her ankle. "Cute. What are you really reading?"  
  
Scully squirms a little. " _The Da Vinci Code_ ," she mumbles.  
  
"I'm sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of your cerebral cortex screaming for mercy."  
  
She glares. "The point is that we're putting down roots here, and it feels good. It feels like we finally have a home."  
  
Everything is going wrong, he thinks. She's supposed to be restless and unfulfilled so I can save the day with that evil fucking letter. She's not supposed to be going to book clubs. "What about your Berger cookies and Virginia medical license? What about my cannoli?"  
  
She laughs. "I'm not giving up on the belief that this will end. But in the interim? Things are good. They're better than good. I'm happy here, all things considered." She cocks her head thoughtfully. "And I can buy cookies online, now that we have an address to send them to."   
  
He smiles carefully. "So would you give it all up today to be a pathologist again?"  
  
"Interesting question. I'd have to say no."  
  
He can actually feel his jaw drop. " _No_?"  
  
"I mean I wouldn't want to be a pathologist again. I just…I'm done with the FBI for good, and there would be...I don't know. Too many memories, I guess." She looks nervous. "If I ever got to practice medicine again though? I'd, um, I'd like to see if I could start a residency in pediatrics. If, if, if…" She finishes with a small laugh.   
  
Jesus. She wants to be a pediatrician. Any freshman in Psych 101 could figure that one out. Tell her NOW, says the voice again. This is your moment. Be her goddamned hero. But his throat closes up.   
  
"You will," he manages to choke out, the words thick and strangled-sounding. "I promise."  
  
Concern flashes across her face and she sits up. "What's the matter?"  
  
"I think I have one of those late summer colds coming on." He coughs a little for effect. "I'll take some NyQuil before bed tonight."  
  
She eyes him up suspiciously, but lets it go. For the moment, he knows.  
  
"Okay. Well, we need to head ashore. I want to get the fish on the grill and hop in the shower."  
  
"You hop and I'll make dinner," he says. "And I want to hear about the book club when you get back. All the gory details."  
  
"I would," she replies. "But the first rule of Book Club is -"  
  
"-you don't talk about Book Club," they finish together, grinning.  
  
He reaches around behind them to start the motor and steer them back to shore.


	9. Chapter 9

The alarm goes off at 4:30 AM with a flat, irritating buzz that manages to piss him off every single morning. "Mmmrnff," he says, burying his face in the pillow and pushing the sides around his ears. "Turninoff." He hears Scully bat around for the off button and then, blessedly, there is silence.  
  
"I'm going to make some eggs," says Scully after a moment. "Do you want any?"  
  
He rubs his hands over his face and blinks experimentally. "Please. Those ones you do on toast where I can poke the egg and the runny part goes on the toast."   
  
She chuckles a little, running her fingers through his tumbled morning hair. "You'll never survive in the wild now. You've been fully domesticated."  
  
"Not fully," he protests. "I still drink things from the carton. And I bite." He growls a little and snaps at her palm, worrying it between his teeth.  
  
"But only on command." Scully frees her hand. She yawns loudly and then gets up, walking around the foot of the bed to the dresser. "I'm going to be testing your carpentry skills this morning," she says, pulling her pajamas off.  
  
"There's a wood joke in there, but I won't offend your delicate sensibilities by making it."  
  
Scully tosses him a contemptuous look over her bare shoulder as she steps into a pair of gray underwear. "Oh, you're such a wit."  
  
"Audrey thinks I'm funny." His stomach does a little flip at the thought of the post office.  
  
"Audrey thinks you're Grade A prime meat." The words are muffled as she pulls a yellow tank top over her head. "She just wants to get in your pants."  
  
"I have a way with government employees." He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and sits up, scratching his stomach. "Hey, are you working at the shelter today? I forgot to put your schedule on the fridge."   
  
"I am. I just have to get the horses turned out and then I'm headed there until four or so. I thought maybe we could see a movie afterwards, if there's anything good." She buttons her shorts, pulls her hair into a ponytail, then tugs her scuffed boots on. They come to the tops of her calves.  
  
He looks at the little hollows behind her knees, the way her coppery hair swishes against her back. "You look very hot in that getup. Just so you know."   
  
She laughs. "This has been my uniform for a while now. What's special about it today?"  
  
I'm probably never going to see you in it again. "I just want you to know I appreciate the little things."  
  
She smiles, something almost shy in her face. "Well, thank you. Now get up while I go make breakfast." She leaves the bedroom, and he hears her boots clomp heavily across the floorboards.  
  
Mulder dresses quickly in a t-shirt and jeans, makes the bed, then pads after her in his sock feet. The kitchen is full of warm smells and sounds of morning. Eggs sizzle on the stove, and he can hear the soft _tickticktick_ of the toaster oven. The coffee pot gurgles promisingly. He watches her jerking the frying pan to make the eggs flip, her movements spare and efficient as ever. The timer dings and he walks over to the counter to butter the toast. She bumps her hip against his, then tips the contents of the pan onto their plates. Mulder leans down to kiss her and finds that she tastes of V8. His hands are around her waist when she pours them each a cup of coffee.  
  
He's terrified of losing this easy thing between them, unsure of how comfortable she'll be under the scrutiny of familiar eyes.   
  
"You look so sad," she remarks, carrying the plates to the table. "Still not feeling well?" Her tone is conversational, but he hears the trained interrogator skimming below the surface like a shark spying an exhausted swimmer.  
  
"Just sort of run down, I guess. Might call it a day after I help Harvey with those beehives." He takes the chair across from her and pokes his eggs with a fork, the yolks running rich and golden over the toast. He wonders if there's anywhere in DC to get eggs this fresh.   
  
"You should meet me for lunch," Scully says. "There's that little deli on the corner. You could get some chicken soup for your cold."  
  
"Where'd you go to med school again? The University of My Grandmother?"  
  
Scully takes a large swig of coffee. "Chicken soup suppresses inflammation, smartypants. Besides, I know damned well you're not sick. So why don't you tell me what's really going on?"  
  
He offers her the look of wounded innocence she expects. "So paranoid," he says. "Everything has to be a cover-up with you." He blows his nose pitifully into a napkin and resists the urge to fake a cough.  
  
She rolls her eyes and spears a bite of pineapple. "Okay then, don't tell me. As long as you don't develop pneumonia by noon, come on by." She checks her watch. "Running late. See you at lunchtime." She drops a kiss on the top of his head before leaving.  
  
Mulder uses Tabasco sauce to make a frowny face on his cold food, then finishes it without really tasting a bite. He grabs the phone to activate the credit cards.


	10. Chapter 10

Mulder wanders down Amelia Street, sunglasses and a baseball cap concealing most of his somewhat disoriented expression. He's got two velvet boxes jammed into his pocket, souvenirs from the forty minute drive to the mall where he took his new credit card for a spin.   
  
"That's pretty, isn't it?" said the girl behind the counter, showing him a band studded with tiny pink diamonds.   
  
"It's very sparkly," he said evasively. "But I'll take the plain ones."  
  
The girl sighed, popped her gum, and put the other back in the case. She boxed up the rings Mulder had selected, and asked how he'd be paying.  
  
"American Express," he said, sliding the card onto the counter with no small amount of trepidation. He watched her swipe it, his muscles tensed as if a SWAT team was about to descend from the ceiling as soon as the transaction went through.  
  
Mulder signed the receipt and felt like he'd come through a gauntlet. He resisted the urge to pump his fist in the air.  
  
"Have a nice day, Mr. Mulder," the girl said, handing him his card and paper bag. "And congratulations."  
  
Mr. Mulder.   
  
He drove back to town on autopilot. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tony Robbins is telling this is the first day of the rest of his life. He's gazing at familiar storefronts, all of them suddenly containing Things He Can Buy. No more itchy Wal-Mart sheets. No more crinkly toilet paper and Goodwill clothes. He wonders what Scully will do when he takes her at her word.  
  
 _I didn't promise I'd say yes_ , she'd told him. Well, he'll burn that bridge when he comes to it.  
  
Just ahead of him, Dwight emerges from the liquor store carrying two brown paper bags. "Goddammit Andrew," Dwight says. "That hat sure better not say what I think it does."  
  
Mulder grins. He'd put on the Knicks hat Scully bought him for his birthday last year, feeling as though it were some signpost to the Rubicon he was about to cross. Once you publicly support the Knicks this far south, there's no going back. "'Fraid so," he replies.   
  
"Harvey sees that hat, he'll kick your ass up between your teeth."  
  
Harvey. He's going to miss Harvey. "Yeah, he might."  
  
"Well, we all have our peculiarities. Y'all want to come by for dinner tonight? We're having ribs." Dwight hefts the bags. "And beer."  
  
He does. He really, really does. “I’d like to, but we’re already booked tonight.”  
  
“Well, we’ll have to take a raincheck,” Dwight says. “Maybe next week.”  
  
Maybe next lifetime.


	11. Chapter 11

Mulder drives to the shelter in a fugue, unaware of the staccato his fingers play on the console, directed by some innate autopilot as his conscious mind roams far afield. He parks in front of the squat gray building where the county animal shelter is located, then sits as though waiting for a burning bush to order him inside.  
  
He draws a deep breath and there's the blink of a memory. He's going after Modell, got his carapace of Kevlar on, antennaed with AV gear, and Scully is sitting with her stubborn chin tipped up and her eyes full of worry. I'm going to kill you if you come back here dead, her eyes say, and he knows right then that he's got it bad, that she does too, and that from here on out it's them against everything. He squeezes her hand and tells her to smile.  
  
He opens the door and gets out of the car.  
  
***  
  
Scully's back hurts. She and a coworker have been hauling industrial sized bags of animal food around, finding places to shove them as Rebecca hauls them off the delivery truck, and being hunched over like this is murder on her spine.  
  
It's been a bad day all around. Mulder is acting peculiar and she has a sinking feeling that it's linked to her relative contentment. She has betrayed him with her adaptability, broken up their aloof little team with Vera's book club and drinks with Lorelei. Maybe she shouldn't have pushed him on the house, but she was ready to fall apart. She had been leaving too many pieces of herself behind in mildewed motel rooms.   
  
In addition to the greater drama, Black Cadillac - the temperamental new stallion - chewed a big hole in her yellow tank top and now she's got on a John Deere t-shirt with a pair of ragged cutoffs. She feels like a reject from a country music video, though she suspects Mulder has a fantasy that starts with her in this outfit and ends on a tractor. And he still owes her a cat, dammit. She grunts in generalized annoyance as she heaves another bag into place.  
  
"Lauren!" Rebecca hollers from across the room. "Just five more bags. You okay, girl?"  
  
"Yeah," Scully lies, and rubs a sore spot on her neck before grabbing another bag of Alpo. The storage room is stiflingly hot, the air so wet it's practically a liquid. She hears a door bang open behind her and a swirl of fresh air wafts in, tempting her with freedom. She sighs and moves a box of flea dip to make more space.  
  
There are heavy footsteps from the doorway, and then Mulder's voice crows, "Agent Scully!"  
  
She whirls around and feels her eyes widen cartoonishly, mouth gaping in utter astonishment. He's finally lost his damned mind, she thinks, and panic chases itself through her thorax. There's a wild impulse to run, but she is pinned in place by shock.  
  
Mulder, wearing the Knicks hat she bought for his fortieth birthday, strides over and gets down on one knee. He's grinning like he's just found a colony of Reticulans living next door, and there's a gold ring dangling from his little finger. "Well, what do you say?" he inquires of her.  
  
She swallows hard, her vision swimming, ambient sounds jangling in her ears. "I say you're out of your mind," she finally manages, her eyes fixed on the ring as though it is a hypnotist's pocket watch.  
  
He laughs and slides the ring down over the first joint of his finger before standing. She is too dazed to do anything but wrap her arms around his neck when he lifts her up. Her knees bump against his thighs and he kisses her, holding her tight about the waist. She savors the rich coffee taste of his mouth and breathes him in, soaking herself in the moment against the terrible fear that she is about to wake up.  
  
"Kersh says we're clear," he murmurs into her neck, his bad boy stubble making her shiver in the sultry room.   
  
Scully is dimly aware of Rebecca and the other employees watching the scene unfold, but they've all faded to a washed-out backdrop. "When?" she whispers into his hair. "How?"  
  
Mulder bends forward and returns her to earth, her legs shaky as a colt's. "Got a letter in the mail yesterday. Certified, from Kersh. He sent our IDs. The real ones. We can go back to the FBI, you can be a doctor, whatever you want." He kisses her again and smoothes the hair back from her face. She wonders if her overloaded brain is generating static electricity.  
  
His recent oddness suddenly makes sense. She wants to be angry at him for not telling her immediately, but thinks of that ring on his pinkie. Of him going to a store and buying it to bring here and surprise her, and has to will herself not to cry. She drops her head against his chest and closes her eyes, listening to the steady tidal rhythm of his lungs. His shirt is clutched tightly in her fingers  
  
Mulder's hands plane her neck and shoulders, rubbing circles on her back. "It's over," he says quietly, and she can hear the words catch in his throat. "So I'm asking you again."  
  
She takes a half step back and looks up at him. "You don't-"  
  
"Say yes!" Rebecca yells.  
  
Scully blushes darker than her sunbleached hair and Mulder's goofy grin returns. She ducks her head to keep her own at bay. "Outside," she says sternly. Turning to her boss, she asks, "Rebecca, do you mind if I…?"  
  
"Only if you promise to say yes," Rebecca replies, apparently unfazed by details of nomenclature. "And I'd better not see you here for the rest of the day, miss."  
  
Mulder tips his hat as Scully shoves him towards the door.   
  
Once outside, she crosses her arms, slouching against the wall of the shelter. "You're serious," she says, the shock starting to wear off. "We can really go back?"  
  
He pulls a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and offers it to her.   
  
She reads it quickly, then looks up at him. "And you're okay with this?"  
  
He leans against the truck. "I just want to go home."  
  
Home. The mental image conjured up isn't just her polished apartment anymore. There's a distinct overlap with a small blue house full of modular furniture and carefully chosen secondhand items. Her mother's face and Vera's run together.  
  
All the places she and William used to go are so safely far away.  
  
"Andr - Mulder, they're asking us to be complicit in another layer of obfuscation. They're _bribing_ us," she says, stalling.  
  
He sighs. "I know. It's, well, it's why I couldn't bring myself to tell you right away. But think about it, Scully. What else can they do? They screwed up and the only way to undo it is wipe the slate clean. It's a bribe, yeah, but I think we've earned it. All the misery we've been through, all the nights sleeping in the van and hours working for slave wages…fuck it, Scully. They owe us." There's something hard and determined in his face, and she gets the distinct impression he's trying to sell himself on this as much as her.  
  
"They want to know if we learned anything in the desert," she says. "They're worried. They'll make us work with them on the vaccine, Mulder. It's why they wanted William, because you and I are both immune…" She hears something shrill in her voice and hates it.  
  
"They can't make us do anything. They could have coerced us years before if they just wanted complicity in their research. And hell, there's probably enough of our DNA floating around to clone us both and not have to bother with the real deal. I think…I think this is what it sounds like."  
  
"But what if it's not?" she asks.  
  
He sighs. "I don't know. I don't have an answer. But if we want to stop running, we're going to have to start trusting people at some point. This may be the only chance we get."  
  
Scully looks at him for a moment, his face shadowed by the brim of his hat. He's run so far and he looks so tired. And she's sick of faking her way through every minute of every day. Returning to life as Dana Scully will hurt - she knows that - but it will be an honest hurt and that counts for a great deal with her.   
  
She runs her forefinger along Mulder's scratchy cheek. "Mr. Trust No One," she muses, and he smiles a little. "I'm okay with it too," she tells him. "They do owe us. And I want to go home."  
  
"We don't have to stay in DC or Virginia," he points out. "We just have to go back to sort out the…details. Hell, we can move back here if you want."  
  
"No we can't," she replies softly. "You know we can't come back here."  
  
"Whatever you want. Pick a place. We can start somewhere new."  
  
Scully shakes her head. "No. I don't want to be a stranger again. Whatever's waiting back there, that's home to me, Mulder. Let's do it. Let's go back." She smiles at him.  
  
He brightens and wiggles his finger at her, making the sun bounce off the gold band "So…?"  
  
She laughs a little, embarrassed by the nervous sound in it. "You don't really have to marry me," she tells him, walking around to the passenger's door. "You get to go back to the FBI, Mulder. You don't want a civilian ball and chain dragging you down while you're shooting for the stars." She opens the door and hitches herself across the vinyl seat, which sticks to her thighs. “Literally.”  
  
He gets in on the driver's side and starts the engine. "Pediatricians don't hunt alien invaders, right?" he asks rhetorically, pulling out of the lot. "That's strictly pathologist work."  
  
For an instant she hates the letter in his pocket. Things were going so well. "I'm done with the FBI," she says. "I'm sorry."  
  
He shakes his head and turns onto the road. "Nothing to be sorry about. I get it, believe me. I wish I were as certain as you."  
  
Moments slide by as they drive towards their house. "So you're going to be an agent again?" she asks, willing him to say no.   
  
"I don't know. I'm still processing everything."  
  
Scully takes his tight jaw, his white-knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel and wants to slap herself. "Mulder, turn up ahead. Turn left, okay?"  
  
He looks puzzled. "Scully what's-"  
  
"Turn!"  
  
Mulder swings the steering wheel hard to the left and they squeal onto Mariposa Street. "What's on…oh," he says as a grand white house comes into view. He gives her an uncertain look.  
  
"He's always at his home office after lunch," she says. "I'm sure he has all the necessary paperwork. You said Kersh sent ID, right?"  
  
He reaches over and opens the glove compartment. Scully sees her driver's license sitting inside and scarcely recognizes the pale woman in the photograph. She takes it in her hand, tapping the hard plastic against her nails. The woman in the photograph wouldn't recognize her either.  
  
"There's a passport too," Mulder tells her as he parallel parks.  
  
She feels around and withdraws the small vinyl booklet. She doesn't open it, but slides her license between the pages. "All set," she tells him.  
  
"Scully, you don't have to do this."  
  
She turns to look at him and reaches for his hand. His large, familiar fingers feel good in hers. "I do. I want to. Unless you've changed your mind, Mulder, I want to."  
  
He runs his thumb over her knuckles. "You don't want to have a big church to-do?" he asks. "Your family, your priest…"  
  
She shakes her head hard as though it will dislodge the lump in her throat. "No," she whispers. "None of that matters." She discovers as she says it that it’s true. She’ll leave behind her house, her boat, all the lies that are her life. But what she has with him is the grit at the center of this strange pearl, and she can take that with her when the rest erodes.  
  
Mulder, who once let her talk him out of wishing for world peace, had smiled then to know he had at least made her happy. He smiles at her that way again and there is joy in it, the light sparking behind his eyes. "Okay," he says, straightening his hat. "Let's get this show on the road, then."  
  
Scully pulls his identification from the glove compartment. They get out and walk up to the house. She knocks on the massive front door, Mulder’s hand firm against her waist. She can’t believe they are going to do this.  
  
The knock is answered by an attractive woman of a certain age who takes in their disheveled appearance with a faint and puzzled smile. “Hello,” she says. “Can I help you?”  
  
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Scully says in the voice of the nervous teenager who used to swipe her mother’s cigarettes, “but we, um, were hoping that-“  
  
“Oh, you’ve come to get married, have you?” the woman says, grinning broadly. “Come on in!” She turns and walks down through the elegant front hall.  
  
Mulder leans down as they follow their hostess. “Sure you don’t want to fly to Vegas?” he asks in a stage whisper. “Elvis, slot machines, a hot tub shaped like a champagne glass…”  
  
She all but shudders at the thought. “No, this is good. I want to do it like this.”  
  
He smiles at her as the three of them enter a large, airy room papered in blue and yellow stripes. At a large cherry desk sits Ted Cavanaugh, the mayor/justice of the peace. His steely gray hair is stylishly cut, swept back from his face. He is finishing up a cold cut sub, an electric green banana pepper dangling from his lip as he chews.  
  
“Hi!” he says, tucking the pepper into his mouth. He wipes his fingers on a paper napkin, then brushes crumbs from his snuff-colored trousers before getting to his feet. “What can I do you for?”  
  
“We need the quickie wedding package please,” Mulder says. “Just the basics. No shotgun.”  
  
The mayor laughs. “Do you have identification?” he asks, flipping through an accordion binder full of what Scully presumes are legal forms. He selects one and puts it on the blotter.  
  
They lay their IDs on his desk and he hands them the application. “No waiting period here, you know. Just fill this out and we can get you hitched on the double. It’ll be sixty five dollars, please.” He hums tunelessly while they complete the paperwork and pool their funds.  
  
“Do, um, do y’all want to change or anything?” Mrs. Cavanaugh asks delicately. “There’s a washroom over there, if you have anything in the car...”  
  
“I’m afraid this is it,” Scully replies, hoping she doesn’t sound defensive.   
  
“It was a bit unplanned," Mulder adds as she watches Mayor Cavanaugh make photocopies of their documentation.  
  
Mrs. Cavanaugh smiles. “Well, that’s real romantic. Hang on a second and let me at least get you a veil.” She walks over to a closet next to the desk and opens it, rummaging briefly. “It’s always more wedding-like when the bride’s got a veil, and I keep mine around just in case.”   
  
Scully cringes at the thought of pairing a stranger’s veil with her current ensemble. “Oh, I couldn’t, really…” but it’s too late. Mrs. Cavanaugh is tugging the elastic band from her hair and positioning a hideous tulle and bugle bead concoction atop her head.   
  
“My! Look at all that red hair!” her impromptu stylist says admiringly, steering Scully before the mirror. She fluffs the enormous veil and pokes a few bobby pins into Scully’s scalp. “You look just like a bride in a magazine now,” she pronounces with great satisfaction.  
  
Scully, transfixed by the enormous frill of tulle encircling her head, thinks she looks like nothing so much as a startled cockatoo. “It’s…I…thank you…” she stammers. She chances a peek at Mulder, who is smirking intolerably. But when he says, “You look great,” she hears something so terribly sweet in his voice that she has to look away.  
  
“You look real pretty, honey,” the mayor tells her. “So! Your paperwork is all filed, the bride’s all fancied up, and I’m ready when y’all are.”  
  
Mulder looks at her expectantly. “You ready?” he asks, and butterflies soar through her stomach.  
  
“Let’s do it."  
  
The mayor tugs on a long black robe. “I always think it looks more official this way,” he explains.  
  
Scully feels like they’re in a play. Mulder should be wearing a top hat instead of that Knicks cap. They need a curtain made of bedsheets and some lemonade in little waxed paper cups. Animal crackers and raisins.  
  
“Do you have any vows prepared?”  
  
Scully offers her betrothed a questioning glance.  
  
“No,” Mulder answers for them. “Whatever your standard boilerplate is will be just fine.”  
  
She breathes a sigh of relief.  
  
“That’s fine. So you’ll just repeat after me, all right?”  
  
“Sounds good,” Mulder replies. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law,” he murmurs to Scully, brushing her wrist with his fingertips. “Are you sure you want to do this?”  
  
She laughs nervously, the veil prickling the back of her neck, and she takes his hand. “I’m positive.”  
  
The mayor clears his throat and looks at Mulder. “You first,” he says. “Repeat after me: I Fox take you Dana to be my lawfully wedded wife. I promise to love you, honor you, and to cherish you; in sickness and in health; for better or for worse; for as long as we both shall live.”  
  
Mulder clears his own throat and looks embarrassed.  
  
Scully feels herself blush. This is stupid. This is so completely stupid and awkward. “Man and wife,” she mutters to herself. “Say man and wife.” Consummation, at least, will be enjoyable, she thinks as she looks up at Mulder with what she hopes is an expression of bridely rapture.  
  
“Go on, son,” the mayor says encouragingly.  
  
Mulder shuffles his feet. “I…Fo-“  
  
“Mulder,” she interjects. She can’t marry Fox. It would be like marrying Andrew.  
  
He grins. “I Mulder. Take you Da-  
  
“Scully.”  
  
“Scully. To be my lawfully wedded wife. I promise to…to track you across several continents, defrost you, and to subject you to untested vaccines; in underground fungal hallucinations or in, uh…  
  
“…chloral hydrate induced tributes to Isaac Hayes,” she suggests, wondering if this performance will nullify the “sound mind” clause.  
  
“For official commendations or suspension without pay; for as long as we both shall fail to get killed,” he finishes, beaming.   
  
Scully laughs. She leans against him and laughs until her sides ache because it is the most ridiculous thing she’s ever done; getting married in a grimy t-shirt and ghastly veil in this nowhere backwater town, and Mulder has somehow made it wonderful. “What he said,” she tells Mayor Cavanaugh when she finally catches her breath. “All of it. And then some.”  
  
The mayor shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard that variant before,” he informs them. “The rings, please.”  
  
She watches Mulder pull them from his pocket, and it’s all suddenly quite real and serious and matrimonial. He passes the larger ring to her, the metal is solemn and heavy in her palm. Scully holds her left hand out, keeping it very steady, and bites her lip when he slips the small band over her ring finger. She stares at her new jewelry, marveling at the sheen of it.   
  
Mulder coughs and she looks up, startled. “Oh!” she says, fumbling with his ring for a second. She slides it over his knuckle and lets out a pent-up breath. Jesus Christ, they’re married. She’s officially Mrs. Spooky. She imagines Tom Colton's face when word filters through the Bureau, and likes the tableau.  
  
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” the mayor says with relish. “You may kiss the bride.”  
  
The bride - who feels as though she is in an alternate reality where any sort of madness might occur - tilts her face up and looks expectantly through half-lidded eyes. The groom, clearly pleased by her complacency, dips down to kiss her. The Cavanaughs, the room, and the veil all disappear down a crack in the space time continuum. She reaches up and curves a hand around his jaw, her fingertips touching the minky hair of his sideburns as her tongue runs over his bottom lip. Reminding herself that the faster they get out of here the faster they can have some privacy, she pulls gently away. Mulder's looking rapturous from under his blue hat and her own smile is making her cheeks ache.  
  
“Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Mulder,” gushes the mayor’s wife. “Smile for the camera, now!”  
  
“Dr. and Mrs. Scully,” Scully whispers to Mulder, but she’s grinning like an idiot as the camera flashes and leaves starbursts before her eyes.  
  
The Cavanaughs press them to have coffee and chicken salad sandwiches before they go, then send them off with printouts of the wedding picture. They walk back to the truck; Mulder clutching the manila envelope of photographs and paperwork, Scully still in something of a daze.  
  
“Well,” she says when they climb in, “this has been quite an afternoon. What are we going to do next?” She is falling in love with the way the sunlight bounces off her left ring finger. It looks so _right._  
  
Mulder turns the key, shifts into drive, then makes an illegal u-turn on Mariposa Street. “You want to make that honeymoon video now?” he asks his wife.


	12. Chapter 12

The ocean is the hue of liquid tourmaline, lapping at the topaz sky along the horizon. Picturesque cotton ball clouds drift lazily overhead, unhurried by the fragrant breeze that stirs the leaves of the coconut palms.  
  
Gazing beatifically at this paradise, Mulder is sprawled in an enormous hammock, moderately drunk on Balashi beer. Next to him, Scully lies quasi-boneless, a floppy straw hat shading her face from the Southern Caribbean sun. The rest of her outfit consists of a black two-piece scant enough to have made her blush when Mulder first presented it. On the table to her left is a turquoise beverage containing a half-dozen varieties of juice and alcohol. It is her third of the afternoon.   
  
"You know, I think the implication was that we go back to DC immediately upon accepting the terms of the agreement. Not run off for an impromptu wedding tour of Aruba on the government's dime," she observes in a languid voice. “They’re probably unamused with us.”  
  
He reaches down to grab a beer from the ice bucket in the sand. "Screw the bastards if they can't take a joke."  
  
She laughs, her warm body moving against his chest. "You have to admit, Mulder, that for all the times they jerked us around, the FBI really has afforded us many travel opportunities."  
  
Mulder chuckles, rocking the hammock a bit. “It was almost a challenge after a while. See how many new spots we could visit.”  
  
“Mmm. Too bad you never learned how to pronounce Oregon though. We hit that one twice.”  
  
He stares at her incredulously. “What the hell is wrong with how I say Oregon?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
He takes a sullen swig of his beer. “Or-ih-gahn.”   
  
Snickers from beneath the hat.  
  
“Fine. How do you pronounce it?”  
  
She draws her bare leg up against his thigh and kisses his neck. “Never mind. It’s endearing.”   
  
“You’re a condescending drunk, Scully.”  
  
“Say ‘park the car in Harvard yard,’” she purrs, nuzzling his ear. “I know you’ve been suppressing that Locust Valley Lockjaw for yeeeahs.” Her fingers trail over his hip.  
  
With one swift motion, Mulder flips her on top of him, dislodging her hat. She lands with her forearms pressed against his chest, her legs between his, and an impish expression on her face. He sleeks his hands over her hair, then runs a finger down the long, straight bridge of her nose. He traces the slight asymmetry of her full mouth. Her eyes are unfathomable as the Mariana Trench, made lovelier by the silken crinkle of laugh lines at the corners. “So you’ve got me all figured out, have you?” he inquires softly.  
  
“Not really,” she tells him, her breath exotic and citrusy. “I’ve just picked things up over time. But I could never hope to have you all figured out, Mulder. You’re inscrutable.”  
  
He kisses her. “I don’t mean to be. Consider me an open book to you.”  
  
She smiles. “Once upon a time there was a boy named Fox…”  
  
“And he grew up and met Little Red Riding Hood walking through the forest. And she said, ‘Oh! What a big-' ”  
  
Scully presses a finger to his mouth.  
  
He nips it lightly. “What did you really think when you met me?”  
  
She eyes darken a shade, turning serious. “I thought…I thought you were different than anyone I’d ever met,” she says. “You did brave, strange things even though they pissed off all the people I hoped to impress. I didn’t understand you at all.”  
  
“Yes you did; you just didn’t realize it at first. You were looking for the truth too, Scully.”   
  
She lays her head down and shakes it, the crown bumping against his chin. “No,” she tells him. “For a while I just wanted explanations. I didn’t care if they were true.”  
  
Mulder doesn’t buy this for a minute, but Scully’s always been her own harshest critic. “You were afraid to believe,” he says. “How could I hold that against you? I was afraid _not_ to. You've always done what you think is right and I’ve always respected you for it, even when it made me want to strangle you.” She stiffens and, with an awful twist in his stomach, he realizes that he has never given her absolution for William. “You did the best thing for him,” he murmurs into her hair. “I believe that, too.”  
  
Her tears are cool on his skin, but her muscles relax and she presses her cheek more tightly against him. “You’ve always forgiven me for everything,” she observes, her voice catching like a silk stocking. “Even when you shouldn’t.”   
  
“You carry a lot of credit with me,” he whispers, and she curls closer. They lay still for a time, skin on skin, the wind stroking them with gentle hands.  
  
“So what was _your_ first impression?” she asks at length, her words muffled by his chest.  
  
He smiles to himself, looking down at the nearly-naked expanse of her back, thinking of the mosquito bites above her sensible cotton underwear. “I thought you looked like an interesting challenge,” he muses. “You and your revamped Einstein. And I thought you dressed like my dad’s La-Z-Boy.”  
  
She punches him in the shoulder.   
  
“I thought you probably had a good sense of humor under that no-nonsense veneer,” he continues. “That you were afraid your looks would undermine how seriously you hoped to be taken. The most important thing to you is being taken seriously and I bet you’ve been that way since you were little. All three of your siblings are of above average height, and I’m guessing those two factors have got something to do with that fancy footwear of yours."  
  
“My next husband’s not going to be a profiler,” she mutters.  
  
He laughs. “It’s my only party trick. I can’t sing classic rock or rotate my hand 360 degrees or anything.”  
  
“I’ll teach you,” Scully says. “You'll be a one-man entertainment sensation.” She turns on her side again and drapes her arm across his chest.  
  
Mulder closes his eyes and holds her like a security blanket, both of them drowsing in the afternoon heat.  
  
He runs his hands over the fine kidskin of her body, smooth as his infant son's, and finds the pain has gone out of the memory of William's tiny fingers curled around his. He thinks of his parents, his sister, and remembers birthday parties and cookouts at the Vineyard before it all went to hell. He remembers Scully, soaking wet and incredulous, laughing at him in an Oregon graveyard.  
  
Whatever strange elixirs course through their veins, whatever waits for them in DC, he can no longer muster up the urge to wade back into the fray. Someone else can save the world, he thinks, his finger idly circling the tiny scar at the back of Scully's neck. He is, for now, glad that they have managed to save themselves.  
  
As he drifts to sleep, his last conscious thought is of his partner crouched beneath the West Virginia sky, her nails crusted with the dirt of a child's grave. He will not go back alone, and he will not ask her to join him again.  
  
When he dreams, he dreams of starlight.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this story was an incredibly weird experience in a way because I felt really, really guilty while doing the happy parts. When I wrote Inhaling The Different Dawn, I put in things that I didn't necessarily want to, but I was trying to weave together all the spoilers and snippets into something cohesive. I hated killing William off a whole lot. But it was right for the story and so I did it. Anyhow, I feel bad in a way for making them so happy in here because it doesn't exactly stay that way. But if it's any comfort, the way I envision things going after the end of Inhaling the Different Dawn is that they do live very happily ever after. I think Scully ends up at the Unremarkable House and Mulder consults for the FBI and Homer lives to a ripe old age.


End file.
